Male, pale and stale could be cricket's epitaph

The US presidential election and the start of the international cricket season with the first Test between Australia and South Africa in Brisbane were two big news events of the past week.

Unfortunately for Australian cricket, there's a perception that it still has more in common with Mitt Romney than Barack Obama.

Obama did not win this election on the basis of his soaring ''yes we can'' oratory about the audacity of hope. Pundits put it down to the fact he stitched together a coalition among groups the Republican Party failed to appeal to - women, young voters, Hispanics, blacks and gays in particular. The Republicans have not adapted to the new realities of a rainbow nation.

"Our party needs to realise that it's too old and too white and too male, and it needs to figure out how to catch up with the demographics of the country before it's too late," the head of the American Conservative Union, Al Cardenas, said.

It all sounds horribly like Australian cricket - ''pale, male and stale'' is the phrase that has often been used to sum it up in recent years.

Cricket has been guilty of failing to win over women and children, Generation Y and multicultural Australia. The price has been declining TV ratings, attendance figures and revenue. Cricket authorities have sought to rectify the situation with numerous reforms and initiatives.

The grandest scheme to broaden the game's ageing and culturally narrow fan base has been the domestic Big Bash Twenty20 competition, about to start its second season. Those running the game believe the short, colourful, fast-paced version of their sport is the thing that will connect it with those who otherwise have not embraced cricket.

In the Big Bash's debut season crowds averaged nearly 18,000 and TV ratings on Fox Sports were strong. It seemed to attract a new cricket audience. Unfortunately, Australia's decline as a Test nation has coincided with the massive amount of energy pumped into T20.

That is a fact that has not been missed by the traditionalists, who fear Test cricket is now being sacrificed on an ugly altar of T20 commercialism, although Cricket Australia insists restoring Australia to the world's No.1 Test nation ranking is its No.1 priority.

In his victory speech last week, Obama pledged himself to ''the task of perfecting our union'' and promised ''the best is yet to come''. Can a union of T20 and Tests be perfected to produce the same outcome for Australian cricket? Let's hope so, for the sake of our national sport.

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